


Union, justice et confiance

by wordplay



Category: True Blood
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:sock_me_amadeus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:12:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordplay/pseuds/wordplay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to Julie for the super-fast beta!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Union, justice et confiance

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Julie for the super-fast beta!

  


## Union, justice et confiance

  
Fandom: [True Blood](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=True%20Blood)  
Written for: sock_me_amadeus in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge  
by [wordplay](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=71/unionjustice)  


Thanks to Julie for the super-fast beta!

The thing about Bill is that he isn't just Old South, he's _Old Louisiana_. Renard Parish is a part of the state more Southern than anything else, but that didn't mean that Louisianans weren't proud of their state's rich history and it sure as hell didn't mean that a man from that northern part of the state where the bayous turned into fertile farmland couldn't be just as hateful about French Louisiana as somebody from closer to Cajun Country.

Bill hadn't yet been born when the first Acadians made their way south from Canada after the Great Upheaval. Sookie hadn't really thought about state history since she was in junior high and she could barely remember the state motto, but she'd lived with an expert for a long time and one day she just sat down with an old book of her Gran's and looked it all up. She'd lost four hours there at the kitchen table, thinking about the things Bill might have seen and what it must have been like. He'd missed their arrival by about 80 years, but his childhood saw their full integration into the state. He was alive when the balance between the Catholic French and the Protestant English was swinging wildly, and although today a name like "Bill Compton" might not mean a damn thing about who your people were (they'd all intermarried so much, for so long, that these things couldn't be expected to mean a thing anymore), 100 years ago it definitely put you on one side of that nasty fight.

Whatever they might have been in the past, it looked like most of Bill's attitudes about people and all the silly things you could hate them for had changed over time. Sookie had spent much of her life listening to other people's thoughts, and she thought she had a real good idea of how watching 175 years worth of history pass you by could make it pointless to hate somebody just for being black, especially when there were so many other things to hate people for. And Louisiana had a long history of being weird about black people, anyway; one of the things Sookie **did** remember from 8th grade is that New Orleans had flourished because of the slave trade, but that during that same period it had the largest population of free people of color anywhere in the United States. So Tara might be angry and suspicious about what kinds of racial baggage Bill might have brought with him from his antebellum past, but Sookie figured out pretty early that race just wasn't a big issue for Bill.

Which was actually pretty great. There were few people rocking around Bon Temps without some pretty nasty thoughts about people who weren't just like them, and it ran the full range of human fear. People were in and out of Merlotte's all day long, positively overflowing with ugly thinking about gays, liberals, Muslims, Yankees, and of course, vampires. There were some really good people mixed in there - Terry, for one, who'd seen things nobody should have to and still had a spirit that was sweet and clean. But a surprising number of men just really didn't like women at all, which Sookie guessed was all right because they were usually with women who thought men were pretty much worthless. And that wasn't even to mention all the people who just didn't like her, freak that she was. So she was thrilled that, with her access to Bill's thoughts cut off, all she had to go on was his actions, and they were honorable - deeply honest, even.

Bill talked about injustice a little differently than Gran always had, talked about it like it was an idea he could lay his cold hands on and fix if people would just stop being stupid enough for five minutes. It was real to him and she wondered if it had always been, wondered whether he had considered hatred of his kind justified and fair back before there was Tru Blood to keep him toothless. Mostly, though, she just got angry at Jason for being a jackass about it all, because who the hell was he to judge anyone?

Sookie had found their first visit to Fangtasia interesting. She'd taken notice right away that this wasn't lack of interest in human differences wasn't really a Bill thing, this was a vampire thing - none of them seemed to have any time for things that kept humans apart, but they were real clear on keeping up the differences between themselves and mortals. Bill wasn't like that; she'd felt lonely for long enough that she reckoned she knew a lonely, isolated man when she saw one. That run-in with the cop on the way back had scared the hell out of her - she didn't like it when he was angry, never mind that he seemed to think that using his strange vampire brain voodoo was perfectly normal - and then he took to listening to that weird throat singing he was so enamored of, one more thing she didn't get _at all_ but was trying real hard not to hate. He was right about that, of course, and it wasn't that she was afraid of it. But one thing was for sure - Bill might not be like other vampires, but listening to that kind of thing, he sure wasn't like the world she thought she knew.

So all of this was in her head the first time she heard Bill talking bad about Rene - who wasn't really 'Rene', of course, but Sookie had enough to keep straight in her head without worrying about the proper name for a man who had killed a bunch of girls and tried damn hard to kill her.

"I should have known there was something wrong with that coonass," Bill spat as he slammed the car into park. "You might think I'd heard enough of that Frenchified English in my lifetime to recognize a fake." He was livid, and it was an ugly look on him. It made Sookie nervous, and it reminded her of other times she'd seen him angry.

"You know, Bill, the whole point is that he _wasn't_ a coonass at all - and I don't like the way you say that word."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Good lord, that man could be obstinate when he was sure he was right.

"You make it sound like something ugly. Have you got something against the French?"

He was silent, staring straight out the windshield, his jaw set, which basically meant 'yes'. Lovely. Every girl wants a broody, bull-headed vampire for a boyfriend.

She rolled her eyes and tried again. "Bill, I'm going to get out of this car in just a minute and let you think about who you are, but I just _have_ to ask: how have you managed to live in Louisiana for _175 years_ when you feel this way?" She knew she was being rude, but my God - you think you know somebody and then something like this comes up.

He turned his head to look at her, a queer look on his face. "Sookie, you don't think I've been in Louisiana all this time, do you?"

"Well, yeah," she said. "I mean, you know everybody at Fangtasia, and it's obvious that you have plenty of old friends from somewhere around here, at least enough for them to come and look you up here in Bon Temps." She leveled a look at him - she didn't like his vampire friends _at all_.

He continued to look at her, a little obviously confused at everything she didn't know. "Sookie, I have not known those vampires for more than 30 years. For most of the time after my death, we could not possibly survive in one place for very long. After all, that is the very promise of Tru Blood, the possibility of lasting relationships and stability."

She thought about that for a little bit. She hadn't really considered it before, not up close and for real, what it must be like to always be moving around, always a little bit scared and unsure how you were supposed to connect to people. And how you were supposed to connect to places, too - she'd been in Bon Temps her whole life and while the town gave her plenty of occasion to deeply regret that, she felt at peace there, connected to the house she'd been raised in and the rich earth it sat upon. She was a product of when and where she was. They all were, really, which was part of the problem.

"So... so you haven't been in Louisiana during that time, so you don't know that we're not doing that anymore? Is that it? Because I have to tell you, Bill - a man can call himself a coonass all he wants, but you really don't need to be doing that. It's plenty hateful, and also it's just... I mean...." She was stuck for words until she blurted out, "I mean, it's just really _stupid_. And _old_."

He looked at her oddly and burst into laughter, which just ticked her right off. She huffed out of the car and made for the porch and suddenly he was there, holding her tightly but not painfully; his arms were snug around her but she didn't feel squeezed, just stopped in her tracks. He looked down at her like he knew her, like he had the right to hold her, and she hated his confidence just a little, and never mind that she liked it a little bit, too.

His voice was low, pitched just for her ears. "I hear what you are saying, Sookie, and I _am_ sorry to have disappointed you. The thing you must understand is that with a lifespan as long as mine has been, I have noticed before that sometimes the rate of change of public opinion is simply glacial, while occasionally it far outstrips that of my own private thoughts. You are right. This is a very old prejudice, one that I haven't had occasion to reevaluate in a very long time. It wasn't something I'd considered before coming back to Bon Temps, but it's not the first time since I've been back here that it's reared its ugly head." He paused there. "It's related to another, similarly unkind thought pattern in which I've indulged since I've returned: the judging of people living now against their predecessors who I knew during my lifetime."

She thought for a second. "You don't like Andy Bellefleur very much."

He nodded. "Very clever of you. However, that's not exactly true; I think Andy Bellefleur is a very honorable man. It's his relatives I didn't much care for, and they are long dead. And I have the audacity to talk about injustice," he scoffed, his face twisted with disdain.

"You have to work on this, Bill; it's not fair and it's not right and it's downright pig-headed and stupid, especially if you're going to sit in my house and talk about injustice." Sookie never could stop pressing a point, but this upset her more than she might have expected. She'd only ever heard the most hateful men of her acquaintance go on about Cajuns, and it was a favorite drunken rambling of her Uncle Bartlett. The thought that these two very different men could share anything made her sick; she refused to think of them in the same breath.

He shushed her gently. "I know. You're right about this, and once again I'm acting a man I do not wish to be." She really didn't want to melt into him the way she needed to, but dear God, she was tired. "He touched you, Sookie. He laid his hands on you and that is not acceptable to me. My rage got the better of me and revealed thinking I am deeply ashamed of." Oh, forget it; she lay her head on his chest. She'd find the energy to be outraged tomorrow.

He kept talking, though. "Your humanity is the best of you, and your kindness is overwhelming. I am sorry, truly, and this is something I will think upon. Please forgive me." He paused. "You make me a better man, Sookie Stackhouse, and I like to think I bring you something as well - perspective, perhaps, and comfort. We work better together than we do apart."

His voice was a deep rumble and her eyes had drifted closed; she was swaying just a little on her feet. "Like the French and the English," she mumbled.

His deep laugh made her cheek tickle where it rested against his chest, and she smiled sleepily, just a little. "Indeed - union, justice and confidence. It is who we are."

  



End file.
